Henry Drury

Who was Henry Drury?

Henry Joseph Thomas "Harry" Drury was an English educator, classical scholar, and friend of Lord Byron.

Henry Drury was born 27 April 1778, at Harrow, London, the son of Joseph Drury, headmaster of Harrow School and educated at Harrow and Eton College. He was a graduate and later Fellow of King's College, Cambridge.

He was a master at Harrow for 41 years from 1801 to 1841 and was tutor there to Lord Byron to whom he became a close friend and correspondent.

Drury was elected to the Roxburghe Club on its first anniversary in 1813. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in February 1818

He died at Harrow on 5 March 1841. In 1808 he had married Caroline Tayler, daughter of Archdale Wilson Tayler. Caroline's sister Susannah later married Francis Hodgson, Provost of Eton.

A mezzotint of Drury by Thomas Hodgetts, after Margaret Sarah Carpenter is in the National Portrait Gallery